Album Notes

SRCD-0040

Yaala Ballin - vocals
Chris Byars - sax
Don Hahn - trumpet
Sacha Perry - piano
Ari Roland - bass
Keith Balla - drums

Seeing Yaala Ballin the other day, dressed for the cold New York winter, the retro lines of her trenchcoat and hat lent her the air of a prewar femme fatale. In reality, while worldly and cosmopolitan, she is naturally open and engaging; nevertheless, the trenchcoat intimates of her journey.

Ballin was born in 1983 in Givat Shmuel, Israel, a suburb of Tel Aviv. She went to the prestigious Thelma Yellin national high school for the arts, attending class alongside a who’s who in the recent wave of Israeli-born jazz musicians to emigrate to New York since the mid 1990s.

Of course it’s no secret that Ballin is a great singer. But listen further, you’ll find that Ballin’s knowledge of harmony and music theory is commensurate with her band mates, a hard-core group that notoriously doesn’t do ‘lite.’ This recording was made entirely with live full-band takes—there are no vocal retakes, overdubs, punch-ins, or ‘fixes,’ and there is no isolation. Very few vocalists record this way today. To be certain, the resulting interplay of the vocalist and musicians is a part of what brings this music to life.

Luke Kaven
January, 2009